Download WEST LOS ANGELES COLLEGE Theater 130 – Playwriting

WEST LOS ANGELES COLLEGE
Theater 130 – Playwriting
PROFESSOR: Martin Zurla
THEATER: A Brief Overview 1
Also spelled theater in dramatic arts, an art concerned almost exclusively with live performances in which the action is
precisely planned to create a coherent and significant sense of drama.
Though the word theatre is derived from the Greek theaomai, “to see,” the performance itself may appeal either to the ear
or to the eye, as is suggested by the interchangeability of the terms spectator (which derives from words meaning “to
view”) and audience (which derives from words meaning “to hear”). Sometimes the appeal is strongly intellectual, as in
Shakespeare's Hamlet , but the intellectual element in itself is no assurance of good theatre. A good performance of
Hamlet, for example, is extremely difficult to achieve, and a poor one is much less rewarding than a brilliant presentation
of a farce. Moreover, a good Hamlet makes demands on the spectator that may be greater than he is prepared to put
forward, while the farce may be enjoyed in a condition of comparative relaxation. The full participation of the spectator is
a vital element in theatre.
There is a widespread misconception that the art of theatre can be discussed solely in terms of the intellectual content of
the script . Theatre is not essentially a literary art, though it has been so taught in some universities and schools. For many
years the works of the Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, and other significant writers such as Schiller were more likely to be
studied than performed in their entirety. The literary side of a theatrical production works most effectively when it is
subordinated to the histrionic. The strongest impact on the audience is made by acting, singing, and dancing, followed by
spectacle— the background against which those activities take place. Later, on reflection, the spectator may find that the
meaning of the text has made the more enduring impression, but more often the literary merit of the script, or its
“message,” is a comparatively minor element.
Yet it is often assumed that the theatrical experience can be assimilated by reading the text of a play. In part, this is a
result of the influence of theatrical critics, who, as writers, tend to have a literary orientation. Their influence is magnified
by the fact that serious theatre cannot be made widely available; for each person who sees an important production,
thousands of others will know it only through the notices of critics. While reviewers in the popular papers may give
greater credence to such elements as acting and dancing, critics in the more serious journals may be more interested in
textual and thematic values. Such influences vary from country to country, of course. In New York City a critic for one
newspaper, The New York Times , may determine the fate and historical record of a production, assuring it a successful
run or forcing it to close overnight. In London, audiences have notoriously resisted the will of the critics, and in some
cities, such as Moscow, reviews may take many weeks to appear.
This is not to say that the contribution of the author to the theatrical experience is unimportant. The script of a play is the
basic element of theatrical performance. In the case of many masterpieces it is the most important element. But even these
dramatic masterpieces demand the creative cooperation of artists other than the author. The dramatic script, like an
operatic score or the scenario of a ballet, is no more than the raw material from which the performance is created. The
actors, rather than merely reflecting a creation that has already been fully expressed in the script, give body, voice, and
imagination to what was only a shadowy indication in the text. The text of a play is as vague and incomplete in relation to
a fully realized performance as is a musical score to a concert. The Hamlets of two great actors probably differ more than
two virtuoso renditions of Bach's Goldberg Variations possibly can. In general, the truly memorable theatrical experience
is one in which the various elements of performance are brought into a purposeful harmony. It is a performance in which
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"Theatre." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2003. Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 13 Aug, 2003 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=118819>.
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the text has revealed its meanings and intentions through skillful acting in an environment designed with the appropriate
measure of beauty or visual drama.
This article contains a treatment of the art of theatre in the most general terms, an attempt to illuminate what it is and why
it has been regarded as a fundamental human activity throughout history. An extensive treatment of the elements of
theatre can be found in theatrical production. For the relationship of theatre to music and dance, see theatre music, opera,
and dance. For historical treatment of Western theatre, see theatre, history of. The theatrical traditions of other cultures of
the world are considered at length in articles such as African theatre; East Asian arts: Dance and theatre; Islamic arts:
Dance and theatre; South Asian arts: Dance and theatre; and Southeast Asian arts: The performing arts. For a general
survey of dramatic literature and its tragic and comic forms, see dramatic literature. Dramatic literature is also treated in
articles on the literatures of particular languages, nations, or regions— e.g., African literature, Belgian literature, English
literature, French literature, German literature, Russian literature, Scandinavian literature, and so on.
General considerations
Exactly how the theatre came into being is not known. While it is indisputable that the traditions born in ancient Athens
have dominated Western theatre and the theories of Western drama up to the present, it is impossible to state with
certainty what the theatre was like even a few years before the appearance of Aeschylus' earliest extant play, Persians
(472 BC). Legend attributes the invention of the dithyramb, the lyrical ancestor of tragedy , to the poet Arion of Lesbos in
the 7th or 6th century BC, but it was not until the creation of the Great (or City) Dionysia in Athens in 534 that tragic
drama established itself. The Dionysiac festivals were held in honour of Dionysus , a god concerned with fertility, wine,
and prophecy. Dionysiac celebrations, held in the spring, were traditionally occasions for frenzy, sexual license, and
ecstatic behaviour welcoming the return of fertility to the land after the winter (reflected dramatically in the Bacchants by
Euripides). The Great Dionysia was a more formal affair, with its competition in tragedy, but its religious purpose is often
cited as a pointer to the origin of drama itself.
In the theories that see drama as a development from primitive religious rites , the dramatist is often described as a
descendant of the priest. Theatrical representation could have arisen first from the substitution of an animal for a human
sacrifice , say a goat for a virgin or a young warrior. In time, the formula of the sacrifice might have been enacted
ritualistically without the actual sacrifice of the animal. (The word tragedy is descended from the Greek tragoidia,
meaning “song of the goats.”)
Considered in such a way, the most famous of Greek tragedies, Oedipus the King by Sophocles, can be seen as a
formalistic representation of human sacrifice. Oedipus becomes a dramatic embodiment of guilt; his blinding and agony
are necessary for the good of all Thebes, because it was by killing his father and marrying his mother that he first brought
the gods' curse upon his people. Aristotle felt that the representation on stage of Oedipus' suffering was a means of
vicarious purgation, or cleansing, for the spectators.
Other explanations, however, for the origin of drama have been offered. Mimesis, the artistic representation or imitation
of an event, has been discerned in such primitive rituals as war dances, which are intended to frighten the enemy and
instill courage into the hearts of the participants. These dances may imitate the action of battle itself, or at least the way in
which the participants hope to see the battle develop.
The origins of drama have also been attributed to simple storytelling, as when the storyteller adopts a false voice or adds
characterization through movement and costume. In such terms, the art of theatre could be described at its most
fundamental as the presence of an actor before an audience.
Whatever the primary motivation, the first systematic elaboration of theatre can be seen through the work of the Greek
playwrights of 5th-century-BC Athens. Aeschylus apparently inherited a form that consisted of a single actor responding
to or leading a chorus. His innovation is generally considered to have been the use of a second actor, and it was either
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Aeschylus or Sophocles who added a third actor as they competed each year for prizes in the Great Dionysia. Once a third
actor had appeared, the chorus gradually declined, and it was the multiplying individual characters who assumed
importance. In this way, classical Greece left to posterity a measure of specialization among theatrical performers.
Beyond these formal elements, however, classical drama offers a pattern of development that has been reenacted
continually in other cultures throughout history. The rapid rise and decline of drama in ancient Athens paralleled the rise
and decline of the Athenian civilization itself. Great periods of achievement in theatre have tended to coincide with
periods of national achievement, when man's breadth of vision expands to encompass the cosmos, as in Elizabethan
England . Conversely, periods of excessive materialism, such as those of the decay of ancient Greece or ancient Rome,
tend to produce theatre in which ostentation, spectacle, and vulgarity predominate.
Probably more than in other arts, each theatrical style represents an amalgamation of diverse heritages. Although the
Greek theatre has long had the most direct influence on Western culture, many later innovations have been borrowed from
previously remote cultures such as India, Bali, and Japan. A fundamental difference between borrowings from Greek
theatre and borrowings of a more recent and exotic nature is that the techniques of Greek performance have not been
handed down with the texts. Most of what is known about the actual performance of Greek plays is the result of scholarly
and archaeological research. Information about the nature of the music and of choral dances, for example, is very skimpy.
In the Oriental theatre, on the other hand, techniques as well as texts have survived. For example, the no theatre of Japan
has been handed down through families of performers with little change for 600 years. In addition to the instructions for
performers contained in India's Na tya-s astra , there is a major descriptive treatise on music, giving guidance on musical
techniques. The Na tya-s astra, which may be as old as Aristotle's Poetics (4th century BC), is a book with very specific
injunctions to performers, including dancers. Some of its techniques may be found in surviving theatre forms such as the
kathakali dance in Kerala, India. In turn, some of these techniques have been assimilated by such Western directors as
Jerzy Grotowski and Peter Brook. With other writers and directors consciously exploiting techniques and traditions from
such forms as Kabuki and no , new relationships are inevitable.
There is little doubt that the Greek theatre, with its literary emphasis, has provided Western theatre with a sense of
continuity in stories, themes, and formal styles. The plays themselves are regularly revived, with discernible references to
specifically modern concerns. It is also notable that the Greek theatre has served as a model for such great writers as
Racine and Corneille in France and Eugene O'Neill in the United States. When Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman
(1949) touched its audiences with awe and pity in the manner of Aristotle's prescriptions, critics debated whether the play
could be genuinely tragic in the Greek sense, given that it had no nobler a protagonist than the salesman Willy Loman.
Implicit in all developments since Athenian drama reached its peak in the 5th century BC has been the measure of the
greatness of the Greeks. That the heights which they achieved have never been equaled stands as a powerful argument
against an easy belief in the constant progress of mankind.
Theatre as expression
Mimesis in theatre
The art of the theatre is essentially one of make-believe, or mimesis. In this respect it differs from music, which seldom
attempts to imitate “real” sounds— except in so-called program music, such as Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, which
suggests the sounds of a battle. In this respect, the art of narrative in literature is much closer to that of the theatre. In a
story, considerable attention must be paid to plausibility. Even if the story is not intended to be believed as having actually
happened, plausibility is essential if the story is to hold the auditor's attention. The principal factor in plausibility is not
precise correspondence with known facts but inner consistency in the story itself.
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Drama also requires plausibility, but in drama it must be conveyed not by a narrator but by the actors' ability to make the
audience “believe in” their speech, movement, thoughts, and feelings. This plausibility is based on the connection
between the impression made by the actors and the preconceptions of the auditors. If the character Hamlet is to be
plausible, the actor must make his audience believe that Hamlet could conceivably be as he is presented. This does not
mean that the actor must make his audience believe that he literally is Hamlet, merely that he is plausibly and consistently
making-believe to be Hamlet. The aim of a performance is not to persuade spectators that a palpable fiction is fact, that
they are “really” there, out on those bitterly cold battlements of Hamlet's castle at Elsinore. Indeed, they are far freer to
appreciate the play and to think about it if they are not “really” present. Knowing all the time that it is a figment, they are
willing to enter into the make-believe, to be transported, if it is sufficiently convincing. Yet they know that, however
thrilling or pleasurable the rapture, it may be shattered at any moment by some ineptitude or mistake on the stage or by a
coughing neighbour in the audience.
That is the basic rule, or convention, of the make-believe of the theatre. The actor breaks the basic rule of the game if he
forgets his words, or laughs at private jokes, or is simply incompetent, or is unsuited to his part. No audience can accept a
vulgar, lumpish, elderly Hamlet, because Hamlet is a young prince whose lines are consistently thoughtful and witty. Yet
it is not necessary that the actor playing Hamlet should “really” be all these things; he need only give the impression of
being princely, witty, elegant, and young enough to sustain the credulity of the people sharing the make-believe. That
credulity can extend a considerable way; several times in her old age the actress Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet.
Thus, in every performance there must be realism in some degree. At certain epochs and in certain kinds of plays, the aim
has been to be as realistic as possible. But even the most realistic production (e.g., Anton Chekhov's play The Cherry
Orchard in Konstantin Stanislavsky's production at Moscow ) made immense concessions to theatrical artifice.
Conversation in real life often leads nowhere; it is full of inconclusive, meaningless, boring passages. It does not
necessarily attempt, as every word in Chekhov's play must, to fit into a story, to be part of the expression of a theme, or to
introduce and reveal a group of characters.
Though most commercial, light comedies continue to be written and acted as realistically as possible, realistic theatre fell
out of fashion in the first half of the 20th century in response to the advent of motion pictures . Just as realistic painting
declined when photographs began to achieve similar effects mechanically, so did staging that attempted to reproduce the
actual world in every detail decline when such effects became commonplace in films.
Even before the introduction of motion pictures, the theatre was moving toward extravagantly nonrealistic theatrical
effects, from the puppet-inspired theatre of Alfred Jarry, author of Ubu roi (1896), to the Symbolist dramas of Maurice
Maeterlinck, Edward Gordon Craig's concept of the Übermarionette (“Superior Puppet”), and theatrical surrealism. The
most unrealistic productions, however, inevitably retained certain quite realistic features; the actors still had to be
recognizably human, no matter how fantastic the script and settings might be.
Theatre as expression
Theatre as social expression
In different contexts, different aspects of humanity have seemed important and have therefore been stressed in theatrical
representation. Renaissance drama, for instance, emphasized the individuality of each character, while in 17th-century
theatre, which was much more restricted in its philosophy and in its setting, man was presented not as a creature
proclaiming his unique importance in the universe but rather as one adapted to the quite limited environment of 17thcentury society. The greatness of the Elizabethan theatre was the universality of its outlook and the breadth of its appeal;
these have never been regained. Since the latter part of the 17th century the art of the theatre has been concerned with
smaller themes and has aimed at a smaller section of society.
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From the 17th to the 19th century, the theatre's leading characters were persons of breeding and position; the “lower
classes ” appeared as servants and dependents, mostly presented in low comedy. Rustics were almost automatically
ridiculous, although sometimes their simplicity might be endearing or pathetic. The 17th-century plays of Molière are a
good deal more egalitarian than English plays of similar date, or even of a century later; but even Molière never allowed
the audience to forget that his plays were about, and for, persons of high station. A very clear line is drawn between
employers and employed, and the latter, though often more intelligent, never seem to belong to quite the same species.
By the middle of the 19th century, European theatre had become at least as much a middle-class as an aristocratic
entertainment. Nevertheless, it was still thought important, especially in London, that the actors suggest gentility. George
Bernard Shaw , in Our Theatres in the Nineties (1932), remarked that to be employed in a good production it was far less
important that a young actor be talented than that he speak “well” and be beautifully dressed. The plays that succeeded
throughout Europe were plays about men and women of good social position, and the plots were concerned with some
infringement, usually sexual, of the genteel code of behaviour; The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893) by Arthur Wing Pinero
is an example.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917 the Soviet theatre broke with gentility. The heroes and heroines of Soviet theatre
were splendid, muscular, idealistic workers. In western Europe, however, gentility continued in the 1920s and '30s to be
the dominant aim of the fashionable theatre. In New York City it received a setback at the time of the Great Depression of
the 1930s. At a famous series of productions at the New York Group Theatre, the director Harold Clurman was in
conscious revolt against the oppressive bourgeois gentility of the day. The theatre was not spectacularly successful,
however, and it stayed in existence for no more than a few years.
In Europe it was not until after World War II that the theatre made efforts to reflect and to interest a wider section of
society. By that time, however, audiences at all levels had lost the habit of theatregoing and were fast losing the habit of
moviegoing, as television was becoming the popular medium of drama— indeed, of all entertainment. Theatre began to be
directed not to any one class in society or to any one income group but rather toward anyone who was prepared for the
energetic collaboration in the creative act that the art demands.
Elements of theatre
The theatrical hierarchy
Theatrical art demands the collaboration of the actors with one another, with a director, with the various technical workers
upon whom they depend for costumes, scenery, and lighting, and with the business people who finance, organize,
advertise, and sell the product.
Collaboration among so many types of personnel presupposes a hierarchy. In the commercial theatre the most powerful
person is usually the producer (until recently known as the manager in the British theatre, which has now adopted the
American usage). He is responsible for acquiring the investment that finances the production. The rehearsal of the play is
conducted by the director (formerly known in Britain as the producer), who is responsible for interpreting the script, for
casting, and for scenery and costumes. Under his general direction a stage manager, possibly with several assistants, looks
after the organization of rehearsal and the technical side of the performance— light and curtain cues, properties, sound
effects, and so on.
Naturally, the hierarchy varies somewhat in different circumstances. In the state-subsidized National Theatre of Great
Britain, for example, the apex of the pyramid is an artistic director, who is more concerned with guiding the policy of the
theatre than with details of administration or the preparation of any single production— though he may, of course, also
assume responsibility for the preparation of a number of productions.
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The dominant expression so far as the audience can tell is nearly always that of the actor with the most important part. It
may, therefore, be wondered why theatres are no longer dominated by actor-managers, as they were in 19th-century
London, where Sir Henry Irving managed the Lyceum for 21 years (1878–99) as its artistic director, administrator,
producer-director, and leading actor. Since Irving's day theatrical business has become infinitely more costly and
complicated. Budgets in Irving's time were only a fraction of what they became a century later. A single Broadway
musical can now cost in excess of $5,000,000, while the running costs of organizations such as the Royal Shakespeare
Company rise to many millions of pounds each year. In addition, there are complicated negotiations with trade unions.
Although the leading actor seems completely to dominate the performance, he is often only a mouthpiece: the words he
speaks so splendidly were written by somebody else; the tailor and wigmaker must take some credit for his appearance;
that he should play the part at all was usually not his own idea but that of a producer or director.
Even before the actors assemble for the first rehearsal, the producer, director, designer, and— if he is available— the author
have conferred on many important decisions, such as the casting and the design of scenery and clothes. In the commercial
theatre, the capacity of the theatre that is selected determines the budget and therefore the scale of the production.
(Different considerations affect the planning of programs in the subsidized theatre, including responsibility to new
writing, to the national heritage, and to a balanced repertoire.) Certainly the most lively part of the work still lies in the
period of rehearsal, but much of it has been determined before it begins.
Although it might be supposed that the author would be the best person to direct a play, he usually is not, for several
reasons. First, authors are apt to love their brainchildren not wisely but too well; and, like most parents, they are not
usually the most impartial judges of their plays' character and quality. Also, authors rarely combine a knowledge of their
own craft with a good working knowledge of the quite different craft of direction.
Elements of theatre
The role of the audience
It is partly because it is a collaborative art, involving so much compromise, that the theatre seems often to lag behind other
arts, expressing dated views in a dated manner. There is another reason too: the theatre depends more than most arts upon
audience response. If the house is not full, not only does the performance lose money, but it loses force. It is unusual for
new ideas, even for new ways of expressing old ideas, to be popular. With few exceptions, people apparently do not go to
the theatre to receive new ideas; they want the thrilling, amusing, or moving expression of old ones.
If a performance is going well, the members of its audience tend to subordinate their separate identities to that of the
crowd. This phenomenon can be observed not only at the theatre but also at concerts, bullfights, and prizefights. The
crowd personality is never as intelligent as the sum of its members' intelligence, and it is much more emotional. Intelligent
members of an audience lose, to an extraordinary degree, their powers of independent, rational thought; instead,
unexpected reserves of passion come into play. Laughter becomes infectious; grave and solid citizens, as members of an
audience, can be rendered helpless with mirth by jests that would leave them unmoved if they were alone.
Theatre audiences are, moreover, virtually incapable of an intellectual consideration of the ideas presented to them unless
those ideas are already familiar. Familiar ideas can be received effortlessly while the emotional or thrilling or amusing
aspects of the presentation are enjoyed. Thus the effectiveness of a theatrical performance never depends solely upon the
excellence of a text. Laurence Olivier's performance as Shakespeare's Richard III was more exciting than his
performances in many superior works of Shakespeare. Theatrical art succeeds to the degree that excitement is engendered
in the audience, a factor unrelated to the intellectual merits of the text.
The effect of theatre structure
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From the 17th to the 20th century few dreamed of building a theatre in other than the now traditional proscenium style.
This style consists of a horseshoe auditorium in several tiers facing the stage , from which it is divided by an arch— the
proscenium— which supports the curtain. Behind the curtain the backstage machinery facilitates quick changes of
illusionistic scenery. This type of theatre was developed for Italian opera in the 17th century. From the proscenium
theatre's introduction, productions of plays of all themes have tended to exploit the audience's pleasure in its dollhouse
realism.
The proscenium theatre separates the audience from the performers. In the theatres of Elizabethan England, the actors
performed in the very midst of their audience. Their theatre had evolved from the courtyards of inns, in which a raised
platform was erected for a stage. Some members of the audience stood around it while others watched from windows and
galleries surrounding the inn yard.
In the early years of the 20th century, the English actor-manager William Poel suggested that Shakespeare should be
staged so as to relate the performers and the audience as they had been on the Elizabethan stage. His ideas slowly gained
in influence, and in 1953 just such an “open” stage, with no curtain and with the audience sitting on three sides of it, was
built for the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario. A considerable success, it had a strong influence on subsequent
theatre design.
The open stage proved suitable not only for Elizabethan plays but also for a wide repertoire. Probably it will never
completely replace the proscenium, which remains more suitable for the countless plays that were written with such a
stage in mind, such as the comedies of Molière or the highly artificial comedies of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Oscar
Wilde. On the other hand, the more realistic plays of Ibsen, Shaw, and Chekhov, all written for the proscenium theatre,
lend themselves well to the open stage.
There are three solid reasons for preferring the open stage. First, more people can be accommodated in a given cubic
space if arranged around the stage instead of just in front of it. This is important not merely for the economic advantage of
a larger capacity but also for artistic reasons— the closely packed audience generates more concentration and excitement.
A second reason for preferring the open stage is that the actors are nearer to more of their audience and can therefore be
better heard and seen. This point is contested by adherents of the proscenium stage, who claim that the actor at any given
moment must have his back turned to a large part of the house and, as a result, must be more difficult to see and hear. If
the open stage is used efficiently, however, the actor's back will never be turned to anyone for more than a few seconds at
a time.
The third reason is that members of an audience seated all around the stage are far more aware of the presence of the
others than is the case in an opera house. The performance thereby is appreciated more as an event jointly shared and
created by the audience and the actors.
Since the arguments for the open stage were first made, theatres such as the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., have been
designed “in the round” so that the audience completely surrounds the stage. Other theatres have followed the example of
Grotowski's Polish Laboratory Theatre by taking as the starting point an “empty room,” in which a different environment
may be constructed for each production, radically altering the relationship between actors and audience for each play.
The proscenium has come to be associated so closely with creating “illusion” that it has led to a misconception about the
function of drama and to a misdirection of the energies of dramatists, players, and audiences. The single-minded attempt
by the actors to create, or by the audience to undergo, illusion reduces drama to a form of deception.
The art of the theatre is concerned with something more significant than creating the illusion that a series of quite
obviously contrived events are “really” happening. King Lear is far more complex and interesting than that. Art is
concerned not with deception but with enlightenment. The painter's art helps its audience to see and the musician's art
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helps it to hear in a more enlightened way: Rembrandt and Bach are trying not to deceive their audiences but to express
and to share their deepest thoughts and feelings. Similarly, the art of the theatre is concerned with expressing the most
profound thoughts and feelings of the performers about the story they are enacting, so that the audience may partake in the
ritual event.
Elements of theatre
The influence of writing and scholarship
Like the other arts, the theatre has been the subject of a great deal of theoretical and philosophical writing, as well as
criticism, both of a journalistic and of a less ephemeral character. Members of the theatrical profession have probably
been influenced by the work of scholars and theorists more than they realize. Scholarship has made Shakespeare's work,
for example, far more intelligible and coherent. On the other hand, many of the scholarly debates over small points seem
irrelevant in the theatre.
A commendable example of scholarship is the emendation of Mrs. Quickly's description of Falstaff's death in
Shakespeare's Henry V (Act II, Scene 3), from “a table of green fields,” which, in the context, seems unintelligible, to “a
[i.e., he] babbled of green fields,” which is not only comprehensible but touching. But it scarcely alters the way in which
an actress will speak this phrase. It is one descriptive phrase among five or six others relating his fumbling with the sheets,
playing with flowers, and smiling at his fingers' ends. It may be the greatest description of the moment of death in all
literature; in the course of performance, however, an audience does not follow even so great a passage as this word by
word.
A compelling actor playing Hamlet can ask whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the “eggs and bacon” of outrageous
fortune, and few will be aware that he has not said “slings and arrows.” And, if Mrs. Quickly says “a table of green fields”
with good accent and discretion, the musical flow and emotional effect of this marvelous speech will hardly be
diminished.
Until recently, scholars and professionals in the English-language theatre lived almost completely segregated from one
another. The tradition is rather different in continental Europe, where for many years the dramaturge has been a vital part
of the state theatre companies. A dramaturge is usually a writer, critic, or scholar who advises the theatre on literary
points, editing classic texts and perhaps translating foreign plays. With the establishment of the National Theatre of Great
Britain in 1962, the idea of a dramaturge was transplanted to Britain, the critic Kenneth Tynan becoming part of the
theatre management in 1963. Other British theatres, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Glasgow Citizens'
Theatre, have fruitfully married scholarship, in the form of a dramaturge, to their planning of productions.
Much journalistic criticism is marred by a reviewer or critic who wants to be just without being dull. Justice demands
reason and moderation, but such qualities are often less interesting to read than high-coloured opinion. Shaw was perhaps
the greatest theatrical and musical critic in English, but he again and again strayed, in the pursuit of readership, into
exaggeration, prejudiced partisanship, and facile jokes at the expense of actors, as in his Our Theatres in the Nineties.
The place of theatre in contemporary life
Work, leisure, and theatre
In general, human beings have regarded as serious the activities that aid in survival and propagate the species. At all levels
of sophistication, however, serious human pursuits offer opportunities for entertainment. Perhaps members of the human
species have never made a clear-cut distinction between work and play. The best workers enjoy their work, be it surgery,
carpentry, housework, or fieldwork. They engage themselves in work that permits, even demands, an expression of their
invention and ingenuity. Indeed, the most valuable workers are not the most strenuous but rather the most ingenious and
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resourceful; and as their tasks increase in complexity and responsibility, the need for intelligence and imagination
increases. These qualities are also expressed in the play of such people.
In the times and places in which theatre has become frivolous or vulgar or merely dull, the more educated theatregoers
have tended to stay away from it. This was the case in London during the first half of the 19th century. A similar
movement away from the theatre by the intelligentsia occurred in New York City in the middle of the 20th century, as
fewer and fewer serious productions were undertaken. While Broadway became primarily devoted to musicals or star
vehicles, interest in serious theatre developed in the smaller and more specialized Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway
theatres.
Of the many theories and philosophies propounded about the purposes of theatrical art, from the Poetics of Aristotle
onward, most presuppose that the theatre is directed toward an elite consisting of the wealthier, more leisured, and better
educated members of a community. In these theories, popular theatre is assumed to be noisily cheerful and egregiously
sentimental, with easy tunes, obvious jokes, and plenty of knockabout “business.” In the 20th century, however, the
distinctions between social classes became progressively more blurred. Egalitarian manners became fashionable, indeed
obligatory, and the theories that gave serious art a role exclusively for the upper classes lost much of their force.
Paradoxically, while more people in the industrialized nations are enjoying more leisure than ever before, there has not
been a proportional increase in theatrical attendance. Those engaged in the professions or employed in a managerial
capacity, unlike the aristocrats of earlier times, generally allow themselves little leisure time. Of those engaged in
industry, whose leisure time has increased, a significant proportion do not choose to attend the theatre regularly.
Moreover, the theatre's efforts to appeal to the whole community generally have been futile. There exists an everwidening gulf: on one side, a small, enthusiastic, and highly vocal minority clamours for art galleries, symphony concerts,
and drama; on the other side, the vast majority is apathetic with regard to these cultural pastimes and institutions.
The place of theatre in contemporary life
The role of subsidy
A serious theatre, with or without massive public attendance, must be sustained by other financial support. Public funds
have been used for this purpose throughout Europe and in much of Asia. The assumption behind such a subsidy is the
realistic one that a serious theatre is now too costly to pay its way.
In Great Britain in 1940, under the threat of imminent invasion in World War II, the government took the first steps
toward subsidizing theatre by guaranteeing a tour of the Old Vic Theatre against loss. Subsequently, with the
establishment of the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1946, its support of theatre increased continually. By the last quarter
of the 20th century many millions of pounds were committed each year to supporting a network of regional theatres, small
touring groups, so-called fringe theatres, and the “centres of excellence,” meaning the National Theatre, Royal
Shakespeare Company, English National Opera, and opera at Covent Garden. Subsidy in Britain was the means by which
the British theatre industry became the strongest in the world, both as a significant export and as a chief tourist attraction.
Until the middle of the 20th century, private patronage was still the sole support of legitimate theatre in the United States ,
but eventually charitable support was encouraged by a structure of tax allowances and by philanthropic organizations such
as the Ford Foundation. With few exceptions, however, professional theatre in the United States remained strictly a
commercial business. Nonprofit regional theatres gradually created an alternative to Broadway, but while the regional
theatres have established faithful and discerning audiences, the record of the commercial theatre has been blotted by
numerous instances of greed and irresponsibility and an absence of a longer view than immediate personal advantage.
Unions have sometimes pressed demands that have made professional theatrical production economically difficult.
Academic theatre
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A significant factor for some years has been the theatrical activity conducted by the universities with departments of
drama. Their theatres, often handsomer and better equipped than professional houses, present plays of all sorts. Millions
of people attend performances in university theatres each year, and in serious planning and choice of programs the
academic theatre's standards are far superior to professional theatre, since the aim is educational. Unfortunately, many
leading parts, whether in classics or in potboilers, call for assured and authoritative actors between 35 and 50 years of age.
Academic theatre, therefore, is handicapped at the outset by the immaturity of most of its student-actors, though
professional actors are sometimes hired for special productions or to become actors-in-residence.
A more serious drawback is that the direction of drama departments and of university theatres is often entrusted to
academics, chosen in most instances for scholarly rather than theatrical distinction. Furthermore, most college theatres
operate on extremely low budgets, and, while money without taste and intelligence cannot create good theatre, taste and
intelligence without money can seldom do so either. The highest standards can, in certain instances, be achieved by sheer
ingenuity, but, in general, shoestring budgets result in that desperate air of “making do”— almost a trademark of academic
theatre.
It is a common error in universities to suppose that the mere production of a masterpiece must amount to an educational
experience for players and audience alike. It is not so. Incompetent acting and direction can reduce the greatest
masterpiece to suffocating, excruciating tedium. Moreover, in many schools the theatre must be economically selfsupporting, and each season one of the successful Broadway musicals of yesteryear is put on to redeem the losses incurred
by Shakespeare, Molière, and O'Neill.
In Britain the universities still, with few exceptions, have been slow to find a place for theatrical art in the curriculum.
They frequently continue to take the view that, if university students want to act, they must join a club and act in their
spare time. But in the 1960s British universities began to come together for annual festivals of student theatre, and many
are the professional careers that began with a university group at the Edinburgh Festival.
The place of theatre in contemporary life
The search for an audience
In Great Britain, government subsidy has been applied in varying fashion to attract wider audiences to the theatre.
Theatre-in-education companies have been formed to tour schools, with both classical and new or improvised plays.
(Although rarer, similar companies can be found in the United States and Canada, such as the Living Stage in
Washington, D.C., an offshoot of Arena Stage.) Probably the most significant investment has been in the regional theatres,
where the intention has been to provide audiences with not only a wide-ranging repertoire but also the opportunity to
develop regional voices. The Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre have also made regional tours a
significant part of their planning, but London is still the theatre centre of Britain and the audience remains a minority.
In the former Soviet Union the statistics of popular interest in art and literature were impressive, but the level of creative
work was kept low by censorship . Artistic creation was compelled to conform to party policy, and the political machinery
often manipulated popular opinion. In the theatre, success was sometimes assured to productions that were politically
acceptable, denied to those that were not.
In both the East and the West, tremendous efforts are being made toward more fruitful use of the leisure time that
technology has made available. But by the second half of the 20th century, theatre had become a regular leisure-time
activity of only a small minority. Although the civilized world generally regarded a serious theatre as an essential activity,
deserving of public support, the mere existence of an intelligent and imaginative theatre does not ensure such support.
This can probably be achieved only by profound changes of belief concerning the purpose not merely of theatre but of
human existence.
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Live theatre has demonstrated an unexpected tenacity in the face of competition from film , television , video, and other
popular entertainments. At one time theatre lovers feared that a new generation of actors, directors, and technicians
without professional experience of the theatre would precipitate a decline in theatrical art; on the contrary, many people
most identified with movies have taken large risks to perform on the stage, so that actors such as Dustin Hoffman, Martin
Sheen, and Lauren Bacall have brought to the theatre precisely those qualities of risk and commitment that make live
performance so challenging.
Other factors that contribute to the perpetuation of theatre include the theatrical classics themselves, the classic dramas of
different epochs and different cultures such as Molière's Tartuffe (1664), Racine's Phèdre (1677), Ibsen's Peer Gynt
(published 1867), Shaw's Saint Joan (1923), Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children (1939)— the instances could be
multiplied countless times without exhausting the great works of the human spirit. Such works were written for the stage
and can be given full expression only by stage representation.
Adaptations for the screen or television of material that was conceived in terms of the stage remain merely adaptations. If
the original is a work of genius, the adaptation must seem presumptuously inadequate. Although Laurence Olivier's film
adaptations of Shakespeare's Henry V, Hamlet, Richard III, or Othello were justified in that thousands of people who
would not otherwise have had the opportunity saw the adapted plays magnificently performed, those who saw both the
stage and the film versions can testify to the superiority of the theatrical experience. The texts were necessarily garbled
and hashed, and the acting and direction were adapted to suit a medium for which the originals were not conceived. Some
part of the public will always believe that it is as important to see fine performances of theatrical masterworks as to see
the originals of great achievements in painting, sculpture, and architecture, rather than mere photographic reproductions.
As long as this is the case, there is a good reason for the continued existence of a live theatre.
Another reason for believing in the survival of theatre is that the live theatre can achieve a sense of occasion impossible
for canned events. This sense of occasion is a heightening of everyday people and occurrences into a new vividness and
significance: not just the heightening of characters and events of the drama but also a heightening of the people who take
part, spectators as much as performers. This can occur more effectively if the occasion is a great one, if the house is large
and full, if the audience appears to be distinguished, and if celebrated performers are taking part. But the sense of occasion
can be achieved more simply, more subtly, and less expensively. What matters is that, when the performance begins, the
audience should be excited, receptive, and ready. Yet the heart of the occasion lies not in the auditorium, however
bedizened with celebrity, but on the stage. There a troupe is about to create either a new work or a new interpretation of a
classic. The sense of occasion is at its strongest when the cast is distinguished, but even unknown players in obscure
performances can create it.
Activity is required of the theatre audience if the performance is to succeed; the audience is required to share with the
performer, to assist him in the act of creation. In films and in television, mistakes can be eliminated, unsuccessful scenes
can be reshot, even rewritten, and the whole work can be manipulated, edited, titivated, and set before the public with
every detail in place. The product has been prefabricated without the cooperation of its audience, which is therefore
reduced to the status of a mere consumer. In the theatre, on the other hand, every audience helps to create or to destroy the
performance. To some extent, audiences get the performance they deserve.
Moreover, in every live performance is the imminence of disaster. An actor must be skillful and an audience must be
imaginative if Macbeth, seeing a phantom dagger in the air, or Othello, falling down in an epileptic seizure, is to be
moving and impressive instead of merely ludicrous. Yet it is precisely this hairbreadth division between the sublime and
the ridiculous that creates the sense of occasion.
Some dozens of immortally great expressions of the human spirit have been written for performance by live actors for live
audiences and cannot be adequately experienced in any other medium. This is why, in spite of economic difficulties, in
spite of far smaller technical resources and far greater distributive problems, the live theatre must survive.
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Additional reading
Few works deal extensively with the aesthetics of theatre as a body of knowledge or theory unrelated to particular
productions, schools of playwriting, or historical periods. Notable modern exceptions are Antonin Artaud, The Theatre
and Its Double (1958; originally published in French, 1938), which considers theatre in its broadest implications and has
had enormous influence on avant-garde theatre since World War II; and Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre (1968,
reissued 1975), an elucidation of personal artistic values by the director-teacher whose Polish Laboratory Theatre has been
among the most controversial and innovative theatres of the century. The ideas of one of the 20th century's most important
playwrights and directors emerge in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, edited and translated by John
Willett (1964, reissued 1978). A tendentious view of the shaping of 20th-century theatre by an influential director emerges
in Erwin Piscator, The Political Theatre, translated and edited by Hugh Rorrison (1978; originally published in German,
1929). Perceptive analyses of aesthetic points of view represented in theatrical production include Mordecai Gorelik, New
Theatres for Old (1940, reprinted 1975), a classic work on staging and design that covers the late 19th century and first
four decades of the 20th; Bernard Shaw, Our Theatres in the Nineties, 3 vol. (1932, reprinted 1954), an incisive
contemporary view of drama in the 1890s; and the writings of such major 20th-century critics as Harley Granville-Barker,
Stark Young, George Jean Nathan, and Kenneth Tynan. Personal histories by leading theoreticians and practitioners,
including Konstantin Stanislavsky, My Life in Art, translated from the Russian (1924, reissued 1980); and Harold
Clurman, The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties (1957, reissued 1983), carry implicit
commentaries on the art of theatre. Konstantin Stanislavsky, An Actor Prepares, translated from the Russian (1936,
reissued 1980); and Toby Cole (comp.), Acting: A Handbook of the Stanislavski Method, rev. ed. (1955, reprinted 1971),
though specialized, develop aesthetic points of view that have underlain much of the theatrical production in the West
during the 20th century. A classic study of the aesthetic intentions of theatre is contained in Francis Fergusson, The Idea
of a Theatre (1949, reprinted 1972); while Peter Brook, The Empty Space (1968, reprinted 1981), is a brilliant analysis of
theatrical values as manifested in such diverse areas as commercialized drama, the popular, or “rough,” theatre, and the
dedicated avant-garde, or “holy,” theatre. A detailed examination of the development of experimental theatre in the 20th
century can be found in Christopher Innes, Holy Theatre: Ritual and the Avant Garde (1981). An overview— outdated but
still singular— of the many different forms and aesthetic conditions of Oriental theatre is contained in Faubion Bowers,
Theatre in the East (1956, reprinted 1980). Discussions of the conditions under which theatrical forms have emerged
appear in many works, including Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed., 12 vol. (1907–15), available also in
numerous later editions, both complete and abridged, and those of Margaret Mead and other anthropologists. Finally, such
periodicals as Drama Review (quarterly; formerly, Tulane Drama Review), Theatre Arts (1939–64), and Theatre
Quarterly (1971–81), contain important reportorial, critical, and philosophical writing on theatre as both an artistic and a
social expression.
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